I never cast it -- you can pull off like three Flare spells in the time it takes to charge one Meteor -- but goshdarnit it's satisfying to be this strong.

Fun fact: even though you have no way of finding this out in the core game, Octomammoth absorbs holy-elemental attacks. And for whatever reason, Meteor is coded as holy-elemental. Octomammoth gave Rydia a spell that Octo himself would be healed by, had I not had to kill him to get it.

Speaking of absorbing holy attacks, the CPU battle is replaced by the Mist Dragon. Balancing the ATB meters of five different members makes it virtually impossible to avoid taking a ColdMist counter a few times...

...but it's fine.

Kain rejoins the party at this point just like in the core game this randomizer sucks

I grabbed this and played through it last night and today. It was interesting! I started with Edge, who is a power player very early on, but the randomization screwed me up a fair bit because the Hook was at the bottom of the Sealed Cave, and the Luca key was at the bottom of the Lunar Subterrane. He didn't get his other spells until LATE.

I turned off Wyvern's MegaNuke. Seemed like the thing to do.

のほも is such a good word?? the concept is kind of hard to fully get across in translation, but basically it means a feeling of pure, deep, platonic affection, and i think thats beautiful

You know how the Hummingway cavern has a secret shop mixed in with all the uselessly humming little cat-guys with the best items in the game?

There's no end to the crappy throwaway treasure, huh? I do find a Genji shield for Cecil, so I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Wait a sec... I've fought Rubicante before, he strides into the Kaipo inn to interrupt any attempts to find out why there are so many Robo-Yangs all over the place.

Oh. This is the gauntlet battle with the Elemental Fiends.

Well, two of 'em. Given the way the battle is coded, if you can do enough damage fast enough you can obliterate one Elemental Lord so thoroughly the others just give up and you don't have to fight them. Either that or I hit Rubicante with an attack that disallows counterattacks. If you can disable the counter-move that prompts the next form, you can cut boss fights like this one short.I don't know what attack that might be, though, I'm pretty sure I just nailed Rubicante with Bahamut, and I know that's counter-able. Red Giants in this dungeon counter with Explode if you summon at them, and I got a harsh reminder that this was the case as Rosa pulled Rydia back up off the floor.

Anyway since I already have the Bahamut summon I get a sword for that guy I kicked out a little while ago.

Well, that was a bust. So many dungeons seem to be, really. It just turned out that I had to finish Zot to get the Dark Crystal but I needed the Earth Crystal from Baron Castle to get to Zot but I needed the key from Cave Magnes to get into Baron Castle but I needed the TwinHarp at the end of the Sealed Cave to get into Magnes but I needed Luca's Necklace from the Land of Summoned Monsters to get into the Sealed Cave.

And I had to do Ordeals in order to get the plain ol' regular Crystal before coming here, because I don't wanna get walled by Zeromus at the core.

Anyway... Who could this be? They appear as a sparkle, and as we all know that means there's no telling what will pop out.

MEGAFLARE TOTAL PARTY WIPE LOL

I kick out Rydia and take Palom, since I figure at my power level I can totally pull off a win by bringing a level 10 non-summoning black mage into the party now.

pfff hahaha no I don't

also who is this Zemus person his name has literally not been mentioned anywhere

lol

Okay, think back. When's the last time I found a lance for Kain?

If you guessed it was

I find a Blizzard lance in the pool off to the side. So that's pretty co-- pretty nice, if I ever find a lancer to carry it.

collect your winnings! This is the first lance Kain gets to equip since I took his starting Wind Lance off of him and gave him the Blizzard Lance I found in like the second chest I opened in the game.

I took a screencap of all the chests in the moon to show off how wildly inconsistent the power level of my findings could be, but eh. I found Asura in one chest, sure, fine, great, Dragoon Armor and Helm, Crystal Shield and Helm... A Yoichi bow replaces the Archer/Killer Bow Rosa's had since I think Damcyan, but Rosa's been kind of deadweight for most of the game so I haven't expected much out of her.

y tho

Y THO

Y U DO DIS

Rosa vaporizes Baigan with a Holy spell and we find that the item that Zemus fears and loathes is... a Sage's Surplice. A robe that can be found as early as Zot in the core game.

I'm starting to get the impression that nobody mentioned Zemus before because who frickin' cares the guy is scared of a shirt

Not a great time. Like I said, sometimes I gotta get up and do baby things and I leave the emulator running this isn't a contest

Key Items 16/17 BECAUSE YOU MADE ME GO GET A FRICKIN' LINEAR PROGRESSIONCharacters 16/18 who am I forgetting I thought I got all the character join scenesBosses 31/34 but really it's 33/34 because I fought summoner Yang and Rubicante when I destroyed Mist and then un-destroyed it with a load state

After that the game is nice enough to pan around and tell you where all the key items were hidden. Except I got damn near all of 'em.

Going back and talking to Sheila after wonking Yang on the head being what would have given me the last one. Whoopsie.

Oh, that's a character-joins scene, too. Probably Cid, I guess, I never saw that guy. So that's two questions answered.

The Package is, like, the most inherently funny key item for somebody to give you. "Oh, some Dark Knight left this here a while back. You can have it." *King hands you a bundle of magic explosives*"I have to recover from my injuries, but I hope this will help you in my stead. *willowy bard hands you a bundle of magic explosives*"Luca, come here and give the nice humans that thing you have around your neck." *dwarf girl hands you a bundle of magic explosives*Cecil promoted to paladin! Tellah remembered his spells! FuSoYa gains peak strength! And here's a thing for you. It's a bomb!

Anyway, that's game.

That was fun! More fun than Beyond Babil, certainly. But if I were to play another round, I'd probably un-randomize the bosses. Earlygame bosses don't get any harder being scaled up, lategame bosses become unbalanced if scaled down, and any one of 'em can by Wyvern popping up to give you a game-ending middle finger at any moment unless you specifically disallow when you set up the mod.

Quick check of a couple things:One missing character is the Yang I could get in Mist after the Rubicante fight. We saw that one. The other is Cid, indeed laid up in Kaipo where Rosa usually is.I looted Troia castle, which I forgot to do, and a couple other chests I forgot. Troia was a bunch of crap, one of the towers in the Dwarf Castle had an early Crystal shield, and I'm pretty sure every chocobo forest had the same Crossbow. One of those "lol, how nice could they be" chests in the Lunar Path turned out to be the Leviathan emblem. Not sure where to find Odin, or for that matter the Pass.

I've played this 5 minutes and it's pretty delightful. Started with Porom/Kain and the TwinHarp, was feeling pretty good after picking up a Flame Spear, Shield, and Glass Helmet in Baron and then the hypnotized Yang fight was Odin.

... Tellah in the place of Edward for Damcyan makes me glad cutscenes were taken out, though.

nosimpleway wrote:Quick check of a couple things:One missing character is the Yang I could get in Mist after the Rubicante fight. We saw that one. The other is Cid, indeed laid up in Kaipo where Rosa usually is.I looted Troia castle, which I forgot to do, and a couple other chests I forgot. Troia was a bunch of crap, one of the towers in the Dwarf Castle had an early Crystal shield, and I'm pretty sure every chocobo forest had the same Crossbow. One of those "lol, how nice could they be" chests in the Lunar Path turned out to be the Leviathan emblem. Not sure where to find Odin, or for that matter the Pass.

A lot of times you can find the summons in shops.

のほも is such a good word?? the concept is kind of hard to fully get across in translation, but basically it means a feeling of pure, deep, platonic affection, and i think thats beautiful

I guess the other problem holding the mod back is that half the cast was never meant to be used at endgame. Porom is Rosa with less HP and no Aim command, throw on Fake Tears to make her... even more useless. Palom is Rydia with less HP (!!!) and no summons, throw on Bluff to... increase his INT to the point where it'll be at endgame anyway. Tellah is a FuSoYa whose stats go down instead of staying the same and has no MP. Dark Knight Cecil can't not promote, the Deathbringer ain't that good when all the monsters you fight are immune to instakills and your armor choices stop at pre-shipwreck earlygame. DK Cecil is the only character who can't equip Adamant.

Edward's massive stat-ups after level 70 have a chance to actually matter (I got to level 70-75 pretty easily, running from most of the encounters in Cave of the Father and the Lunar Underground) but your endgame weapons are limited to the Lamia Harp (that's also pre-shipwreck) and the Mage Masher knife. Go on. Put Edward on the front row and let him knife a guy. At least in the GBA version he Loki's Lute from the back row to plink for 2500-3000 damage three or four times before everyone else could move (or for damage limit against anything with a racial flag, making him Edge, But More).

Maybe if you find a Rune Axe Cid can be kinda-viable, but he's still an objectively worse Yang, even when Yang doesn't have Focus and Brace and doesn't get HP after level 60.

I'd say "Maybe the next version of the mod will give the option to add GBA-version weapons and armor" but hell, if you can give Cid the Fiery Hammer, you can also give Yang the Godhand, so that still doesn't fix much.

It'd be kind of nice to have a local version of the randomizer, too. I tried it one more time this morning and had a supremely boring one (Cecil, Kain, Edge, Rosa, Fusoya. Crystal and Dark Crystal by I think 36m, with Adamant Armor available in a shop and an early Crystal Sword, so a dupe and some Giant level grinding to officially win). Can't really weight to prevent that without taking a bunch of fun out of it so of course the answer is just to start a new one, but repeatedly going through the site to do so feels kinda bad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway I kick Cecil and his awesome endgame gear to the curb in favor of the guy who collapses in a stiff breeze. I do have a Masamune for him to start, though.

Oh yeah, one of the shops -- I wanna say Agart? -- sold Protect Rings. I got everybody one.

Likewise, they sell Ribbons in Tomra.

If you can't summon your earthquakes through the vector of a phantom beast summoned for the purpose, storebought is fine.

Kain > Yang, so I kick Kain out for Yang. Have you figured out where I'm going with this?

I use the Warp glitch to pick up the... uh, actual Darkness crystal this randomizer sucks. Because the Sealed Cave sucks more.

This roll gives crystals v freely

Uh... let's see. I find another Masamune in the Sylph's house, so Edge is dual-wielding them now. Sheila gives me the Babel Key, then the Baron Key. I guess I didn't really need to go to the mirror chamber after all. (Rat tail -> Pan -> Baron Key)

I didn't need to go through Baron, but I did, because fuck this guy.

Inside is a free set of Adamant armor.

Fast-forwarding some more, Dr. Lugae had the Package, the airship crew had the Magma Key, which explains how they got down there to rescue me from Babel in the first place I guess.

My final downgrade is complete! I'm pretty sure it's suicide to walk into endgame with Edward, unpromoted Tellah, or unpromoted Cecil. This is as close to "definitely gonna lose" as I'm willing to go. I never found a Deathbringer for DK Cecil anyway.

Fifth?! Yeah, Adamant was for sale in Mist, and most of this running around was to raise the dosh to buy everyone a suit. I was expecting to have to return from the Moon and sell off Moon-treasures to get the last set, but here it is.

The question of "Hey, can you win without excruciatingly grinding up to level-90s with an intentionally subpar party?" is kind of rendered moot when everyone in the subpar party is wearing a Ribbon, a Protect Ring, and Adamant. Palom has the Stardust Rod (+15 Wisdom), Porom and FuSoYa have a Life Staff each (+15 Will), Cid has a Rune Axe and Edge is dualing Masamune.

I run through the rest of the Subterrane without collecting any of the treasure or fighting the rest of the bosses.

Oh please, I got a bigger bang from your mom last night.

Yeah Palom died but I thought the game had glitched out, because Palom's first spell, Edge's first attack, and FuSoYa's first spell all whiffed. I tried casting Holy just to see if something would happen. Holy landed, and Zeromus did his usual counter with Weak, so Palom ate it here. Turns out Ribbons, Protect Rings, and Adamant don't protect against HP-to-1 attacks.

I had to Berserk Cid to get his damage output to break four-digit figures. Edge threw the Spoon, an extra extra Masamune, and the three Excaliburs I found. Palom and FuSoYa cast Flare a bunch. Palom kept everyone patched up, since even a couple of triple-digit damage Big Bangs to this party is significant.

Given that Cid is the only person here with more than 3000 HP, I'm willing to chalk up the entirety of this victory to "Adamant was for sale in Mist".